Firefighters come in different shapes and sizes, and therefore each firefighter typically has an assigned set of firefighting apparel, which may be custom fit to his/her figure. This ensures that firefighters can don and doff their protective garbs quickly and easily in emergency situations, and ensures that the protective apparel will not unnecessarily hinder movement of the firefighters when working in stressful and dangerous conditions.
Further, firefighters and other emergency personnel often use sophisticated technical equipment to assist them in their professional duties, such as radio equipment which enables them to speak to a dispatcher, to a commander, or to a colleague, with such equipment often carried on the person's garment in a manner whereby it can be easily accessed when needed. Emergency personnel may be active during duty. Fighting fires can be a vigorous activity. While moving vigorously, a firefighter doesn't want to lose his/her electronic communications equipment.
Such equipment comes in many different sizes and shapes, with electronic equipment seeming to get smaller and yet more sophisticated as technology develops. Yesterday's cell phones, for example, were often bulky and heavy but today's cell phones are relatively small and light. Firefighting equipment has similarly evolved as has other electronic equipment used by emergency personnel.
Moreover, particularly since technology is changing so quickly, as a practical and economic matter it is not feasible to provide the emergency personnel with new garments for carrying the equipment with each change to an item of new equipment. As a result, new equipment is often carried in pockets which were not designed to carry equipment having the size of the latest equipment. This can be an obvious problem in the relatively infrequent instance when the new equipment is bigger and will not fit in the intended pocket on the garment. However, this can also be a problem in the more common instance when the new equipment is smaller. That is, even though a smaller item may fit in a larger pocket, the equipment item may shift around in the pocket, with such movement potentially causing, for example, radio dials or buttons to be undesirably changed or pushed as the radio slides against walls of the pocket. Further, fishing the item out of a pocket can be made more difficult when the smaller item is deep in a pocket and hard to reach, particularly for emergency personnel who may be wearing gloves.